ST. PETERSBURG, FL - In conjunction with a renovated Port Saint Petersburg, the Marine Exploration Center is set to open by the end of this year. As the public face of the St. Pete Ocean Team, the Center will bring awareness to the wonders of the ocean (carrying on the tradition of the Pier Aquarium) and also to ports, the maritime industry and all the marine related research occurring in a cluster of high-level institutions in the downtown Saint Petersburg area. An estimated 1600 people are working in a field related to marine research and technology in St. Pete. In addition to the College of Marine Science, there is the U.S. Coast Guard, FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Florida Institute of Oceanography, USGS Coastal and Marine Science Center, NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office, SRI International and more.

The Marine Discovery Center will gather scientists for community discussions by hosting Drink-and-Think events that will also include food trucks. Visitors will have opportunities to tour maritime and oceanographic vessels. Permanent attractions will include the following: Live Coral and Fish Tank, Oceans Today Kiosk (NOAA funded), Corals on Acid (2 tanks; NOAA funded), Counting on Fish/Florida Sportfish Aquarium and Interactive Exhibit (FWC funded), Science on a Sphere (NOAA funded), NOAA Kiosk (NOAA funded), Energizing Research (Duke Energy funded), Coral Cat Shark Tank, Microscope Station, Touch Tank, and Ocean Tracker Exhibit. Finally, a large space dedicated to revolving exhibits will also host movie screenings and other events.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - Since she was an undergraduate, Dr. Amelia Shevenell has been interested in how ocean and atmospheric temperatures influence Antarctica’s ice sheets in the distant and not-so-distant past.

For at least 34 million years, Antarctica has been partially or completely covered in ice. Plate tectonics positioned Antarctica over the pole more than 65 million years ago, and drove India, Australia, and South America northward during the breakup of the supercontinent, Gondwana. This tectonic break-up formed the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current now mostly isolates Antarctica from heat derived from lower latitudes, but not completely. South of the Polar Front, warm nutrient-rich waters formed in northern latitudes upwell, bringing heat to Antarctica’s ice sheets. Both modern and geologic observations indicate to Dr. Shevenell that oceanic and atmospheric warming influences Antarctica’s ice sheet stability.

NSF funded research aboard the US ice-breaker R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer in 2014 is yielding new information on the role of ocean and atmospheric temperatures on East Antarctica’s ice sheet evolution.

Photo By: Amelia Shevenell

By studying the marine geologic record close to Antarctica’s ice sheets, researchers seek to understand the mechanisms by which glaciers retreat when climates were as warm or warmer than present. During the 2014 expedition to the Sabrina Coast, East Antarctica, Shevenell and her collaborators discovered that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is more sensitive to climate changes than previously thought. This is important because global sea level would rise 53 meters (174 feet) if the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melted completely. More realistically, ice melt from the most sensitive regions of East Antarctica could raise global sea levels ~19 meters (~60 feet). Glaciers along the Sabrina Coast are presently retreating and could contribute 3–5 meters (9–16.5 feet) of global sea level rise in a warming world.

Photo: Amelia Shevenell

Shevenell, USF graduate students, and collaborators collected evidence that ice expanded to the Sabrina Coast in the early-to-middle Eocene, much earlier than is traditionally accepted. They discovered deep channels carved into sediments and evidence for least 11 glacial advances and retreats across the continental shelf. These results indicate variability of regional glaciers may have been enhanced by large amounts of meltwater during the Oligocene and Miocene, geologic times when climate was warmer and atmospheric CO2 higher than at present. About seven million years ago as global climates cooled, regional glaciers expanded, stabilized, and were not influenced by meltwater. These results indicate that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet has long responded to climate variability. If meltwater increases as with continued warming, Antarctica’s ice sheets might respond more dynamically than expected.

In early 2018, Dr. Shevenell will return to Antarctica aboard the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) drillship, the JOIDES Resolution. Dr. Shevenell and her USF CMS Ph.D. student, Imogen Browne, will work with an international team of scientists to drill sites in the Ross Sea, which will enhance understanding of Antarctica’s ice sheet evolution over the past 20 million years. This cruise is particularly exciting because Dr. Shevenell has worked for over a decade on proposing and planning this Expedition.

As researchers explore Antarctica, more data is generated that can be plugged into ice and climate models to improve our collective understanding of ice sheet response to ongoing warming. Model improvements will ultimately enable scientists to make accurate estimates of regional sea level rise, which are critical to policy makers, particularly those in low-lying regions, such as Tampa Bay.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - John Paul, PhD, USF distinguished professor, is lead inventor of Red Tide Chek, the first hand-held device that can detect red tide in the field. Red tide is one of Florida’s greatest environmental, ecological and economic threats. These harmful algal blooms can cause human health problems and hamper the economy in lost tourism dollars and damaged fisheries.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - From local to global and micro to macro, the applications of remote sensing are integral to understanding biodiversity across regions and filling the data gaps that exist between them.

Dr. Frank Muller Karger and his group at the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing collaborate with a larger network of scientists and resource managers to catalog biodiversity as it has never been done before: with consistency of data from region to region and at scales that reveal the important connectivity among the gradient of marine habitats.

Sanctuaries Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (Sanctuaries MBON) is part of a global consortium of BONs that are building web portals of real-time and historical data through which scientists and environmental resource managers can assess the ecological well-being of the region they are tasked with studying, maintaining or improving.

On-going bimonthly cruises in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) are conducted by NOAA AOML scientists and members from IMaRS to gather a suite of water quality data. Pairing water samples with satellite observations, IMaRS member Megan Hepner uses GIS maps to display biodiversity of coral reef fishes along the entire reef tract of the FKNMS. Simpson and Shannon diversity indices – statistical methods used to classify ecosystem integrity and resilience – show that greater diversity is found in the Lower and Upper Keys than in the Middle Keys. Dr. Muller-Karger and assistant Dr. Enrique Montes oversee the assimilation of the sampling efforts and observations into the Sanctuaries MBON research initiative.

Tools like infographics will be a key point of interaction on the sites for both resource managers and members of the general public to learn about the biological composition of some protected ecosystems and any changes in diversity over time. GIS maps hosted on the MBON web portal provide further spatial and temporal visualizations of ecosystem health and diversity in three National Marine Sanctuaries: the Florida Keys, Monterey Bay and Flower Garden Banks.

An additional layer of sampling within the MBON initiative is environmental DNA (eDNA). The Marine Genomics Lab led by Dr. Mya Breitbart at the USF College of Marine Science is responsible for analyzing seawater samples for trace amounts of genetic material left behind by anything from microbes to whales. New methods allow for fast, affordable interpretation of the DNA present in concentrated water samples.

The size, depth, and unforgiving surface conditions of the ocean make it impossible to continuously monitor conditions from all desired locations. Satellite-based remote sensing provides solutions at exceptional spatial and temporal scales. Careful groundtruthing is required to match sea surface conditions to the data derived from sensors orbiting the earth, and once that is accomplished, the result is unparalleled coverage of terrestrial and oceanographic ecosystems.

Analysis of satellite data has allowed researchers from IMaRS to study phytoplankton blooms off the Texas coast in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, explore outbreaks of Dengue fever in the Caribbean, and improve wetland mapping methods for coastal areas. In addition, the lab is improving characterization of the impacts to coastal areas from red tides, storm-generated sediment plumes, water quality events, and land cover changes.

Concurrent satellite observations of biological and physical variables from around the world allow observation networks to map the data in near real-time. Some records span nearly three decades, and without these long term measurements, our understanding of changes throughout time would be lacking over much of the surface of the earth. The list of global measurements includes: vegetation biomass (land and ocean), winds, currents, waves, rainfall, cloud cover, land topography, and more. As Dr. Muller Karger states, “This allows us to see how biological processes on land and in the ocean react to, or in some cases modify, environmental variables that force them.”

Understanding diversity of life in the oceans is crucial to managing and preserving these resources, and the use of remotely sensed data enables the study of biodiversity on the proper scales.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - Dr. Monica Cook, a USF CMS graduate (Spring 2015), recently published a manuscript in the journal Water. The manuscript, “Removal of six estrogenic endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) from municipal wastewater using aluminum electrocoagulation” is open access in the Special Issue “Emerging Contaminants: Occurrence, Fate and Transport, and Removal” and can be found at the following link: http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/4/128/

ST. WOODS HOLE, MA - Brad Rosenheim teamed up with Dr. Ann McNichol, Dr. Valier Galy and others from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to offer the first Ramped PyrOx (RPO) workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The event lasted one and a half days, and was attended by USF College of Marine Science (CMS) graduate student Cristina Subt and USF CMS professor Eugene Domack. All three USF attendees chaired panel discussions about the technique, a tool central to several investigations by the Southern Oceans group at USF CMS. The workshop will produce an article to Eos, the news outlet of the American Geophysical Union, and a white paper to NSF.

ST. PETRSBURG, FL - Ryan Venturelli's poster was selected as on outstanding entry in the 2017 Statewide Graduate Student Research Symposium held on Friday, April 21, 2017 at the University of South Florida.

Second Place - Natural and Physical SciencesRyan Venturelli - Title - "Almost Only Counts in Horseshoes and Clumped Isotopes: An Improved Understanding of the Effect of Pressure Baseline on Reconstruction of Temperatures from the Geologic Past"

In March, Ryan Venturelli won the 9th Annual Graduate Research Symposium for the Natural and Physical Sciences category. Because of this symposium, Ryan was given the opportunity to present at the Florida Statewide Graduate Student Symposium in which she received a second place award for the Natural and Physical Sciences category.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - NSF has funded USF College of Marine Science researchers to probe the nature of organic carbon in the water column and the sediment beneath subglacial Lake Mercer in Antarctica. The lake sites beneath over 1 km of ice and is episodically drained and filled by subglacial flow of water from the Mercer Ice Stream. USF researchers are part of an international group that will probe the lake for life after accessing it through the thick ice sheet. Water chemistry, sedimentary microbes, and the nature of the organic carbon within the sediments will be targeted for information about how life thrives and how carbon is cycled in these remote, isolated ecosystems. Of fundamental importance is analysis of whether marine carbon sources are the basis of life in these lakes as they may have had past incursions of marine water. The project website is www.salsa-antarctica.org

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - On Saturday, October 21, 2017, crowds arrived from 10 a.m. onwards to expand their minds and appreciate science, that human pursuit responsible for so many advances in society and industry and a source of excitement and wonder to us all.

Mayor Rick Kriseman championed support for science and recognition of its role in our daily lives as he read a proclamation which established October 21st as “Saint Petersburg Science Festival Day” in the city of St. Petersburg. Inhaling alternately from balloons filled with helium (six times lighter than air) and sulfur hexafluoride (six times heavier than air), the mayor read the proclamation in high-pitched and low-pitched voices and at one point equated science to sports, food, and the arts, suggesting a more common celebration of science within our community traditions.

Research and innovation were well represented at booths hosted by various laboratories from the College of Marine Science, as well as by NOAA, the USGS, and Eckerd College. Both research and conservation were well showcased by FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute through Marine Quest, the original portion of the festival now celebrating 23 years! Fantastic demonstrations were performed by MOSI and Mad Science and several ways that science is important to society were on display by Pinellas County, the City of St. Petersburg, Great Explorations, Bay News 9, Duke Energy and many more.

This year, the festival expanded to include Port St. Pete which hosted FIO’s research vessel, the Weatherbird II, and a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, the Pelican. Inside the port building, visitors could catch a glimpse of what will be the Marine Exploration Center, opening in 2018. The festival offers a very full day of activities and, thanks to the hard work of all the volunteers, promises to be a success next year, as well. We hope to see you all in 2018.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - Sea levels are rising - globally and in Florida. Climatologists, geologists, oceanographers, and the overwhelming majority of the scientific community expect a continuation of this trend for centuries to come due to climate change, ocean warming, and ice mass loss.

While Florida’s natural history indicates that there is nothing new about the changing elevation of the sea, what is new is its accelerating pace. Also new—and alarming—is the ever-growing, immobile human infrastructure near the coasts: high-rise condos, suburban developments, tourist meccas, and international metropolises. In a state where much of the landscape is topographically low and underlain by permeable limestone, the stakes are particularly high. Modern-day sea level rise, with potential impacts to large land areas and populations, poses unprecedented challenges for sustainability, urban planning, and political action.

This book offers an in-depth examination of the cycle of sea levels in the past and the science behind current measurements and future projections. The authors assess the most likely range of sea level rise in Florida based on a synthesis of projections for the next hundred years. They also discuss ongoing and potential consequences for natural marine and coastal systems and how we can begin to plan strategically for the inevitable changes.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - The college is co-sponsoring a sea level rise symposium with St. Petersburg city on November 3, 2014 which is on the first day of Blue Ocean. The event will be held at the USFSP Student Center Ballroom. A panel of local leaders will examine the major facets of sea level rise, from the hard science unveiling the threat and its economic and social impacts to the adaption and mitigation measures our communities can undertake. One of the guest speaker is Dr. Gary Mitchum.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL - SECOORA, US IOOS and University of South Florida College of Marine Science (USF CMS) hosted two interns over the summer. Under the mentorship of Dave Easter (US IOOS), Jay Law (USF CMS) and Vembu Subramanian (SECOORA), the undergraduate students learned hands-on the importance of coastal ocean observing.